Why do I need to have a direct debit to sign up to Power Move?

I wonder how much the people who don’t want to move to direct debit will cost the company more by using more expensive energy by abandoning their self-moderation during peak times.

Also the above reply seems to point the attitude of “You don’t pay by direct debit and some people who don’t do that are bad, so you’ve got to be punished.”

It may also be worth noting that this doesn’t technically fit the definition of “discrimination” either. Only the stuff under the Equality Act 2010 is seen as Discrimination if memory serves.

Your choice of payment method and energy usage patterns are not considered a Protected Characteristic, thus does not gain those protections.

Thanks for pointing that out.  Muddying the waters with definitions will really help this topic along.

If you have a dual tariff meter, you are also excluded from the “Power Move” initiative. No doubt there’s a good reason, but OVO aren’t confirming what this is. I have achieved the target for the last two seasons, but am no longer eligible. 

Probably because being on E7/E10 makes it too easy to “win” without really playing the game. Word on the street is that there’s plans to bring it back in the future though.

No more than they did before PM existed. Ultimately, tariffs are balanced so that it all flattens out in the end.

Ah - too easy to win. That’s an interesting concept.

@Tron Burgundy If my reply can be read as “You don’t pay by direct debit and some people who don’t do that are bad, so you’ve got to be punished.” then it wasn’t meant to.

It’s unfortunate that not everyone is as good at paying bills consistently over 55 years as @Royp is because that must amount to thousands of payments over that time and not one of them missed and although I’m good at paying bills, in the past before DD came along, I must admit to having missed a few here and there due to family circumstances / life getting in the way. Unfortunately paying manually is not a guaranteed payment and saying that you’ve paid consistently in the past doesn’t have the same level of guarantee as a DD does. Consequently OVO has to employ X number of staff per thousand people not on a DD to allow sufficient resources for payment reminders and possible recovery of a bad debt. It happens and that costs money.

Power Move is also an Add On which means that it’s a reward for meeting the entry conditions and moving sufficient power in the month according to the scheme rules. And as to whether people would ‘abandon their self-moderation’ if they are excluded from the scheme I don’t know. As far as OVO are concerned people use power as and when they want to with no penalty because it’s a fixed rate over the 24 hour period. Without an incentive I’m not sure what the self-moderation would be. Certainly before I joined PM I wasn’t aware of any particular need not to use power in the peak and just used power without any particular regard or self-moderation.

Peter

Hi Peter,
In my post I stated that I accepted that this is the way things are done with normal billing, and can see that processing costs would be higher for Pay as You Go because of debt chasing. However, I fail to see how there can be any difference in costs between a Direct Debit account and a Pay as You Go account, when analysing the amount of energy used and at what time it was used, when a positive outcome is a customer reward, while a negative or neutral outcome has no material effect on the customer bill. Your argument that more staff are required leading to increased costs falls over because those increased costs are already catered for in the tariff difference.